EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY. American author.
A Collection of twenty-eight Typewritten Manuscripts, twenty-eight pages, quarto, [ca. 1920 and earlier]. Three of the manuscripts are signed by Edna St Vincent Millay at the conclusion; one bears a holograph correction in the text; and in another she has changed the title. Accompanied by a typewritten letter from her mother, dated Truro, Massachusetts, September 24, 1920, to Charles Hapgood. With original envelope. Fine condition.
Edna St Vincent Millay’s mother has written: “…I have looked up some of my daughter’s typed poems and am now sending them to you. I have no doubt that had she been here she might have gotten for you a better collection, but I chose what I might from duplicate copies that were at hand. I hope that you will enjoy them and that they may be of help to you in the work you want to do. I am sure that you might get a lot of pleasure from her book Renascence and Other Poems, if you should find a copy, and she is to bring out a new volume this autumn….” Edna St. Vincent Millay graduated from Vassar in 1917, having already won fame with the publication of her first volume, Renascence and Other Poems. This was followed in 1920 by A Few Figs from Thistles.
The three typewritten poems signed by Miss Millay include Burial, Doubt No More That Oberon [both published in 1920] and The Wood Road [published in 1923]. The manuscript of The End of Summer was published in The Melody of Earth, ca. 1920, and contains two words corrected in the poet’s hand. The manuscript of Pastel was originally entitled Song, and the title has been changed by the author. This poem is evidently unpublished. The following manuscripts are, to the best of our knowledge, also unpublished [according to Yost’s Bibliography, Collected Poems (1956) and Collected Lyrics (1939)]: Bereavement, The Merry Spinner, Progress, The Poet’s Request, and A Blessing. Also included in this group are three carbon typescripts, entitled The Two Loves and To the Poison Ivy, as well as an untitled poem which commences, “A poem is not a thing that grows.” The remaining manuscripts have been published: That Which is Love’s, published in 1919; She is Overheard Singing, She is Overheard Singing – 2, The Penitent, Nocturne [MacDougal Street], The Merry Maid, To Kathleen and To S.M., If he should lie a-dying [carbon typescript] — all published in 1920; Wraith and Wraith – 2, The Little Hill, No Matter What I Say {Eel Grass], Low Wide, and Ebb — all published in 1921; and The Pear Tree, published in 1956.
Price: $17,500
This item is associated with these categories in our inventory:
- Literature – American
- Women